Languages

Food Etiquette From Around the World

Jul 15, 13 | 12:04 am

By Elise Lévêque

From sticking your chopsticks vertically in your rice, to timing your coffee consumption throughout the day; the world's food court is a minefield of courtesies and common practices that can have you unknowingly committing a tasty taboo. Here's a a quick guide to some of the oddest food related faux pas you can commit whilst travelling abroad.

In Thailand

It is considered bad manners to insert food into your mouth using a fork, as this should be used only to push food onto your spoon. Stand alone items that are not part of rice-based dishes may be eaten solely with a fork but apparently; the worst thing you can potentially do at a traditional banquet would be to use chopsticks, as it is considered tacky.

In Mexico

Never eat tacos with a knife and fork! It's considered a silly and snobby practice, so to be polite try to stick to eating this messy delicacy with your hands.

Two key factors are shaping today’s hotel performance – consumer technology and revenue management methodology. Increased use of technology has changed how consumers buy and hoteliers operate. With the adoption of revenue management, pricing is now established by market intelligence, not a hotel’s margin requirements. To get some control back over profitability, operators should use the rolling forecast as a management tool.

One area to manage costs is resources. Hotels are forced to adjust resource usage based on daily fluctuations in occupancy and revenue. For example, over staffing one day cannot be easily made up for the next day due to inflexible staffing structures and minimum service thresholds.

A 2011 Expedia survey of hoteliers indicated a 28% increase in “same day bookings” with 65% of transactions on mobile devices being booked the same day as check-in. As changes occur faster, guests book later and hoteliers do not know what the average price is for the next day, week or even month. Traditional budgets or even monthly forecasts do not offer sufficient predictability or accuracy of business.

At first sight, a photo of emaciated children in developing countries alongside obese people in the West might seem like an apt way to illustrate the massive gap between the rich and the poor.

But it is not, according to experts at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

A truer picture of wealth can be seen during lunch as the WEF is hosting some 2,500 political and business leaders, including many billionaires.

As these inappropriately dubbed “fat cats” tuck into modest portions of healthy food, sipping water or smoothies, it becomes clear that their wealth has not inspired excess – or at least not excessive eating.

The Undying Importance of SEO: How to Actively Maximize Your Search Engine Presence

Jul 11, 13 | 12:06 am

By Asher Fusco

Generating engagement via social media channels and creating unique experiences for website visitors are important aspects of digital marketing. It’s also important to remember the basics — namely SEO — when building a marketing plan. A good SEO strategy attracts qualified traffic with intent to book.

With more potential travelers than ever using Google and other search engines via the three screens — mobile, desktop and tablet — hoteliers should make every effort to fully optimize their websites. The difference between appearing on the first and second page can add up to thousands of dollars of bookings and RFP submissions.

On Being A Great Tourism CEO and Industry Leader

Jul 08, 13 | 12:06 am

By feature writer Dr. Peter Tarlow

Many people outside of the tourism industry tend to think of tourism and travel as an ongoing never-ending party. Yet anyone who has ever worked in the world's largest peacetime industry knows that travel and tourism professionals spend long hours at work and that travel and tourism works to a great extent like any other large corporation. Just as in other businesses tourism and travel professionals need to deal with budgets, have to justify lost opportunities and must overcome the issue of spoilage. The loss of revenue from an unsold airline seat or hotel room can never be recaptured. Travel and tourism executives have other problems that CEOs or leaders in other industries do not have.

Two Big Life Lessons Make for Management Best Practices!

By feature writer L. Aruna Dhir

It has been a great day for me today. Now greatness can be defined in a myriad ways – you could have got a raise or a promotion or good feedback on that major presentation you made to the Board. The day may have started well with a piece of joyous news about the family. You just started on a month long holiday after a seemingly long period of hard work. It could also be a simple yet complex reason – that things went your way – simple in its outcome, that they happened, complex in their modalities, in how they came about. In my case, it was a special day today as I learned a great lesson; as a matter of fact two.

So let me share them with you and also discuss with you the reason they are great lessons indeed, for work and life.

One potent offshoot of the exponentially swelling internet is choice. Choice in hotels, choice in dining, choice in meeting venues. In this buyers’ market, customers demand nothing but the best in everything they purchase. Hotels are no longer the only entrants in the octagon for conference revenues, but the cage has been opened to restaurants, universities, museums, churches and unused office space.

Good Review, Bad Review, Why Can’t I Just Ignore Them All?

Jun 28, 13 | 12:07 am

By Anne Edwards, Editor in Chief, ehotelier

When ehotelier spoke to TripAdvisor’s Global Vice President of Sales Julio Bruno last week, his most important piece of advice to hoteliers was to reply to guests’ online reviews, whether positive or negative. In practice, what are hoteliers’ thoughts on the importance of responding to guest reviews and what are the blocks stopping them from replying? Judging by the number of responses we have had to this article, this topic is foremost on the minds of many hoteliers. We have included a cross section of their feedback here.

Reasons for not replying to guest comments on social media ranged from not having the time, not having the language skills, not having the expertise and preferring to concentrate on preventing further problems rather than addressing existing ones.